Malaysia it is!

We've arrived in Malaysia after bidding a fond farewell to Indonesia.  In order to get to the Danga Bay Marina in Johor Bahru, we had to cross over the busiest shipping lanes in the world and that's something that is rather daunting when it's a first time experience.  The chart below gives some idea of the complexities of getting through these waters. 

In the end, it was really quite simple but when one sees dozens of behemoths bearing down on your little sailboat, it makes the heart skip a beat or three occasionally.  However, it's very well organised with specific lanes for east/west & west/east, with separator lanes as well as designated crossover channels.  The only trouble is, there were no painted dotted white lines on the water or any stop/go traffic lights at the intersections; rather inconsiderate I must say.  And where were the speed signs and direction arrows?

The night beforehand, we anchored just on the south side of the middle crossover channel to wait for Troutbridge to catch up to us so that we could make the crossing at first light.  Unfortunately, our 'perfect' anchorage turned into a bit of a nightmare as the 18 metres beneath us waited until we'd just got into bed to suddenly change to shallow enough to bump the rudder.  Pete had already grounded before sunset.  Lifting the hook and moving into deeper waters proved just as hopeless as the anchor simply would not set.   After seven attempts (all in the dark) with one uncomfortable episode of balancing on top of a coral head for a while, Paul finally put out every inch of chain and sat on anchor watch all night.  All this when we'd arrived at the anchorage at ten in the morning in what seemed to be a perfect spot.  How wrong could we be?

The crossing proved to be a trouble-free process which took us less than an hour ducking over whenever there was a clear gap between monstrosities.  After that, we turned 90 degrees to port to run along the edge of the shipping lanes just outside the Singaporean port controlled waters.  Here there were lots (and I mean lots) of the big guys running along beside us.  We tried to slow down so that Pete could keep up but ended in a bit of trouble with the currents washing us into the shipping lanes so decided we just had to move faster to keep control.  Instead, we dropped anchor in the channel between Malaysia and Singapore to wait for him for a few hours just to be sure he was safely through.  To be honest, there wasn't an awful lot we could have done it he hadn't made it.

He finally reached us a few hours later so we lifted anchor to cover the last 12nm to the marina which we managed just before sunset.  Troutbridge couldn't cope with the negative current so he waited to get the incoming current late that night and arrived beside us at 5:30 the following morning.  With all his engine problems, he thinks Danga Bay will be his home for the next few months while he tries to get things fixed.  We, of course, will move on northwards up the west coast to Langkawi and then on to Thailand.